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CALGARY—When Kim Prodaniuk, a 10-year veteran of the Calgary Police Service (CPS), reported a supervisor for a sexist comment, she hoped it would be dealt with swiftly.

Instead, it touched off a cascade of retaliation and harassment — and each time Prodaniuk asked for help, she said, it got worse.

Calgary Police Service officer Kim Prodaniuk says that harassment and bullying on the force has gotten worse over the past 10 years, despite reform efforts. She says she hears weekly complaints from current women officers still serving on the force. (Evan Radford / StarMetro Calgary)

One superior officer described her using a gender-based slur, while another dismissed it as “water cooler talk.” She had trouble transferring away from her unit, then faced hostility from coworkers who thought she couldn’t be trusted.

“You speak up once and get bullied for ... years,” Prodaniuk said, describing a litany of incidents as far back as 2012. Finally, feeling “hunted,” she began a lengthy leave in March 2017.

That year, Prodaniuk and several other employees stepped forward to formally complain about bullying and harassment. The service took action to correct its culture problem — but as the months went on, public scrutiny gradually died down. By the time Chief Roger Chaffin announced his retirement in July, officials including Mayor Naheed Nenshi and the chair of the Calgary Police Commission hailed him as a reformer who set the service back on the proper path.

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“He got so much done in the face of a lot of opposition from the old guard, from people who prefer to have an old-school police service that operates in the corners and not in public openly and transparently,” Nenshi said at the time.

But according to three current Calgary police officers — Prodaniuk and two others speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, a man and a woman — the situation isn’t better now. If anything, they say, it’s worse.

Though there are now more avenues for whistleblowers to report issues, employees who use them still face retaliation from supervisors acting without oversight, the officers say. Favouritism and bullying also remain rampant, the officers say, and staff don’t trust that any internal process by the CPS would be fair and effective.

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Prodaniuk has been on leave from the service for a year, but in her role as a director for the National Women in Law Enforcement Association (NWLEA) — an advocacy group she helped found — she said she’s receiving weekly complaints from women in CPS about gender-based harassment.

“People who have been enduring the harassment at the CPS have been enduring it for so long that they’re desperate,” Prodaniuk said.

Some employees she’s spoken to have attempted suicide because of what they’ve endured at work, Prodaniuk said.

“I fight for people like Krista Carle,” Prodaniuk said, referring to the former RCMP officer who brought harassment issues to light. Carle died by suicide in July. “It’s a dire situation.”

Former officer Jen Magnus tearfully resigned at a 2017 police commission meeting. By the time Chief Roger Chaffin announced his retirement in July 2018, officials were hailing him as a reformer who set the service back on the proper path. (Helen Pike / StarMetro File)

In an interview, Chaffin said he believes the officers who spoke to StarMetro are generally telling the truth, but the service is doing the best it reasonably can to make things better.

“Anybody would be foolish to be defensive about (the allegations),” Chaffin said.

“As much as we’ve done, as much as we have accomplished in instituting this process of change, people are yet to believe that it’s working ... People that experienced harm or difficult situations often don’t want to be patient about reforms. I listen to that, I hear it, I respect that position.”

The reforms are focused on improving the service’s human-resources department, which is tasked with dealing with workplace issues like bullying and harassment. The process is based on best practices from across the country, but cultural change moves slowly, said Brian Thiessen, chair of the Calgary Police Commission — the civilian body in charge of certain aspects of police oversight, like hiring chiefs.

“I would hold up our plan against any commission in the country on how to best address gender issues in the workplace,” said Thiessen, who is also an employment lawyer. “I’m not saying it’s perfect and I absolutely expect that we’re going to continue to hear areas we can improve.”

All of the officers interviewed said they were speaking now because they had lost faith in the organization’s ability to fix itself.

“I ask for help. I don’t get help,” said the female officer speaking confidentially.

Though the male officer said he hasn’t witnessed sexual harassment at work, he agreed that the retaliation problem is worse than ever.

“If we speak up, we’re seen as a problem,” said the male officer. “There’s no hope ... This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

Jen Magnus publicly resigned from the Calgary Police Service after experiencing bullying and harassment. (ELIZABETH CAMERON / FOR STARMETRO)

The workplace issues have implications not just for officers, but also the public they protect. A yearlong review of the service’s use of force, released in May in the wake of a spike in shootings by Calgary police officers, flagged workplace culture as a “central issue in any discussion about police use of force.”

Retired Justice Neil Wittmann, who authored the report, noted that he heard allegations of bullying and harassment in the service. He also flagged plummeting morale; an internal survey done last year found that just four per cent of Calgary police employees believe morale is good inside the service, down from 18 per cent in 2014.

“Until CPS is able to change the mentality from the top down regarding bullying of women, civilians and any minority in the service, nothing will change,” read one comment from a 2017 census of CPS employees.

“I am sick of survey after survey,” read another. “There is no accountability.”

Now, as the commission seeks a replacement for Chaffin, who will leave his post in January, Prodaniuk and the officers — as well as Jen Magnus, the former officer who tearfully resigned at a 2017 police commission meeting due to harassment — say real change won’t be possible unless the new chief is a complete outsider.

The current group of police executives have had their chance, Prodaniuk argued.

Prodaniuk and Magnus first came forward with concerns in 2013 to then-Chief Rick Hanson. In response, Hanson launched a human-resources audit of the service’s workplace culture.

The report that followed found evidence of bullying, officers feeling “attacked and frustrated,” favouritism in the promotion process, a fear of retaliation for speaking out and a lack of faith that raising issues would result in change.

It also noted that, although the promotion process had become more fair over time, the perception of an “old boys’ network” of officers who could influence promotions and avoid accountability remained.

At the time, Chaffin was the deputy chief in charge of human resources. Though few in the organization knew about the 2013 report, the service acted on most of its recommendations at the time, he said.

“To say we did nothing about it is not accurate,” he said. “Maybe we’ve done a poor job of communicating that and engaging people on it fast enough. I accept responsibility for it.”

But when Prodaniuk’s coworkers found out she’d spoken to the auditor for the 2013 workplace review, the hostility worsened, she said. It reached the point where she wasn’t able to get a partner for late-night patrols in a high-crime area of the city’s northeast, as her coworkers thought she wasn’t trustworthy and refused to join her.

“There was no end,” Prodaniuk said. “They want you in the penalty box.”

The review wasn’t made public until October 2016, when Postmedia obtained the document. A series of revelations followed.

First, more allegations emerged. In the end, more than a dozen current and former officers filed formal complaints. Then, Magnus turned in her badge at a Calgary Police Commission meeting in February 2017, alleging sexual harassment by coworkers and coverups by supervisors.

“I am not leaving the Calgary Police Service; it has left me,” Magnus said at the time.

In response to the controversy, Chaffin — who had become chief in 2015 — began making a flurry of changes to reform the human-resources department, a process that’s still ongoing. The service hired a law firm to take complaints from employees anonymously, established a third-party advocate for employees with concerns, conducted an independent audit of the current system, started surveying employees and put a civilian in charge of human resources rather than an officer.

Magnus, Prodaniuk and the two officers speaking on condition of anonymity agree that Chaffin and the CPC have made an effort to institute change. But all said those changes haven’t made a difference for officers. Magnus in particular questioned why Chaffin didn’t act sooner.

“He did not make HR reform happen until after I publicly resigned,” Magnus said. “Then all of the sudden, they started throwing all this stuff in super-fast motion ... Well, if I hadn’t done what I did at that police commission meeting, I can guarantee you that nothing would have happened.”

In response to that idea, Chaffin had little to say: “I can only live in the moment that we are rather than speculate on what might’ve been or could’ve been.”

Chaffin and Thiessen said the officers’ allegations about retaliation and harassment are a perception based, in part, on past events and the slow pace of cultural change. Both encouraged the officers to step forward through the Calgary Police Service’s new complaint processes.

Thiessen also said the Calgary Police Association (CPA), the union representing the city’s police officers, has a “big role to play” in the cultural change and needs to “step up.”

“My sense is that the police association needs to engage in its own training and bring itself up to speed on gender and diversity issues within the service,” Thiessen said. “Feedback that we’ve heard is that female officers do not necessarily feel comfortable going to their association and having them advocate on their behalf.”

Union president Les Kaminski said he has received no such feedback. The CPA is currently representing several female officers, he said, and although it often struggles to find the resources to help every officer, the union does everything it can.

He added that he understands why officers are afraid to complain through official channels, explaining that those systems have “no protections” against retaliation. It’s hard to convince officers to act when they’re watching their peers miss out on promotions or transfers after speaking out, he said.

“You have suspicions of why it happened, but you can’t ever prove it,” Kaminski said. “Things can happen behind closed doors that you’ll never hear about.”

Thiessen said he believes the officers, and since every workplace is required by law to protect complainants, the commission will try to address their concerns.

He also said it’s “hard to imagine” how the external law firm hired by CPS to take complaints could be corrupted. Though specific complaints can often identify the person behind them even if the complainant’s identity is protected, that’s a “design flaw” that no organization has figured out how to fix, he argued.

“What would you suggest instead of those by way of institutional change?” Thiessen said. “We literally modelled these changes on best practices, recommended by human-rights commissions across Canada.”

The officers told StarMetro that their trust in the police service is shaken by what they believe is a lack of accountability for supervisors. Magnus, Prodaniuk and the other female officer said they still don’t see consequences for supervisors accused of gender discrimination.

“You help each other out,” said Magnus. “You keep perpetuating that culture throughout the decades and nothing changes.”

Chaffin said every officer, including himself, is accountable. However, he noted that disciplinary situations are often best resolved with mentorship and counselling that are done privately, so officers wouldn’t necessarily see them in action.

“I think we all believe in remediation first, or punishment when it’s necessary,” he said. “There are several people in this organization who are feeling the heat of punishment for their behaviours.”

Thiessen said Chaffin has owned his role in the workplace culture and “never tried to dodge it and push it on previous chiefs.” The chief and the service also report directly to the commission about their progress with reforming human resources, he added.

“We’re constantly on them and working on them,” Thiessen said. “I don’t know how you could more hold the service accountable than that, in a constructive way.”

However, Prodaniuk, Magnus and the two officers speaking confidentially said they didn’t believe anyone entrenched in the current Calgary police culture could truly change it.

“We’re giving these people blind trust to fix problems they created,” said Prodaniuk.

“My personal opinion is that promoting someone from inside the Calgary Police Service, a current executive member, into the next chief’s position is just going to continue the issues. It needs to be external.”

The police commission began the process of finding Chaffin’s replacement on July 31. No candidates have been announced so far.

In the meantime, Chaffin and Thiessen pointed to other possible solutions.

Chaffin said the service is pushing for the province’s coming rewrite of the Police Act, the legislation governing law enforcement in Alberta, to give chiefs more options to deal with bias and harassment.

Thiessen said the police commission will continue to work its way down the list of tasks on its gender equity action plan. In time, the cultural shift will be clearer, he said.

But for now, frustration remains.

“We need the old boys’ club busted up,” Prodaniuk said. “That’s the only way things are going to change.”

Emma McIntosh is an environment, justice and investigative reporter with StarMetro Calgary. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaMci

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